Page:The thirty-six dramatic situations (1921).djvu/83

 TWENTY-FIFTH SITUATION ADULTERY (A Deceived Husband or Wife; Two Adulterers)

Without deserving to constitute a situation of itself alone, Adultery yet presents an interesting aspect of Theft (action from without) combined with Treason (action within). Schiller, following the example of Lope, was pleased to idealize brigandage; Hugo and the elder Dumas undertook for adultery a similar paradox; and, developing the process of antithesis by which were created "Triboulet" and "Lucrece Borgia," they succeeded, once for all — and quite legitimately. The folly lies in the belief of the unthinking crowd in the excellence of the subject thus presented; in the public's admiration for the "Antonys" — but the public has ended by preferring the moving pictures to them.

First Case: — The author portrays the Adulterer, the stranger in the house, as much more agreeable, handsomer, more loving, bolder or stronger than the deceived husband. . . Whatever arabesques may cover the simple and fundamental fad of Larceny, whatever complaisance may be shown by a tired public, there remains nevertheless, beneath it all, a basis of granite the old-fashioned conscience; to it, the thing which is here vaunted is simply the breach of the Word of Honor of a contract — that word, that promise which was obeyed by the Homeric gods and by the knights of Chivalry no less than by ourselves; that base of every social agglomeration; that which savages and which convicts respect between themselves; that primary source of order in the world of action and of thought. The spectators' attention may of course be 81